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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29537094">what we can't control</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaBanana/pseuds/AlphaBanana'>AlphaBanana</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:48:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29537094</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaBanana/pseuds/AlphaBanana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophia tries to talk to Adam about the future.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Detective/Adam du Mortain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>what we can't control</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>SOPHIA</strong>
</p><p>“I was thinking.”</p><p>Sophia has never been good about these conversations – has never been able to raise things delicately, or calmly or—</p><p>But the thoughts ricochet around her skull, and her brain buzzes like a beehive, and she <em>needs</em> to talk to Adam about it <em>now</em>, before she loses her nerve.</p><p>For his part, Adam is quiet (though still relaxed, for now, and she loves that he can unwind here in her flat, with <em>her</em>, more than she will ever be able to say), until he turns to her with a brow cocked and something like a smile playing on the corner of his lips.</p><p>“About?” Leans a little closer to her and she cannot help but lean forward to meet him, to <em>taste</em> him, a teetotaller’s type of Dutch courage. He hums a little against her lips, the vibrations rippling through her lips and outward, settling behind her ribcage and thrumming in time to her heartbeat.</p><p>Though the look in his eyes as he pulls away means that she cannot avoid this any longer. She could <em>try</em> to hold out a little longer, to preserve this little oasis—</p><p>But they are just as stubborn as each other. And he has had 900 years to perfect his technique.</p><p>(What would she be like in a decade? A century? A millennium?)</p><p>“What—what the future might be like.” For some reason, Sophia’s throat is as dry as the Sahara, and she stammers a little over the words, and <em>that</em> does nothing to ease either of their nerves.</p><p>(If asked, Sophia would not be able to say just <em>why</em> she is so anxious, but the fact remains—</p><p>The fact remains that she is fucking <em>terrified</em>.)</p><p>“What—” For a moment, Adam looks more nine than nine <em>hundred</em> years old, jade eyes wide and uncertain, and Sophia regrets ever saying anything.</p><p>“What do you mean?” His voice is hoarse, scrapes along her senses, and she waves her hands vaguely. Turns a little as she rubs the back of her neck, so that she is not meeting his eye (his eyes are a kind of blissful paralytic, and she would gladly stay with him forever, that’s the <em>point</em>, but—)</p><p>“Well, I’m not getting any younger. I found a grey hair this morning. I’ll get slower and weaker in fights and—”</p><p>“I—” Adam’s voice is strained, quiet, but it still strikes like a whip, and she stops her babbling instantly and waits for him with baited breath.</p><p>“I have to—I have to get back to the Warehouse.” He sounds like he’s been <em>smacked</em>, and even though he kisses her temple, gives her hand one final squeeze before he leaves, Sophia is left feeling colder than the ice outside. She resolves to go to him as soon as her shift finishes.</p><p>**</p><p>Well, she tries to. The roads are too treacherous to drive as fast as she would like (and how ironic would <em>that</em> be, to wrap the car around a tree just as she wants to tell him—)</p><p>When she gets to the Warehouse, though, there is no sign of Adam, only Mason pacing anxiously.</p><p>“You’re here.” Mason’s voice is tight, almost angry, and Sophia resists the urge to flinch.</p><p>“Is he still here?” The demand is sharper than she intended, and she scowls a little at herself. “Sorry, I—”</p><p>Mason’s own scowl softens a touch around the edges, but he squints at the sunset as he answers, to avoid looking at her (and is she <em>that</em> hard to look at at the moment?)</p><p>“He left on a recon mission.” Mason’s shoulders have risen up around his ears, as if bracing himself for a blow – when none comes, he starts again. “He said—”</p><p>But it’s only then that his words sink in, and Sophia’s jaw all but slams to her feet. “He <em>left</em>? Just—just <em>left</em>?”</p><p>“Yeah. He—”</p><p>But Sophia is already leaving, walking outside without waiting to see if Mason follows her. The path is still slippery, but Sophia is able to make it to her car before her vision blurs and tears start to prick at her eyes.</p><p>(Sophia had never in her life cried before meeting Adam – and for a while, it didn’t feel like she would ever <em>stop</em> crying for him, over him, <em>because</em> of him. <em>Plus ça change</em>.)</p><p>She remembers, belatedly, that she is still outside the Warehouse, where a great many supernaturals could quite easily hear her, and she starts the car to leave, intending to only drive down the road a little to stop safely, but—</p><p>But the road is icier still than it had been when she arrived and the wheels skid, and from somewhere outside her body, Sophia wonders whether the tree or the car will be more damaged as the two collide and her world fades to red.</p><p>
  <strong>ADAM</strong>
</p><p>Jacques would have said that taking the recon mission from Mason was the coward’s way out. Adam thinks he might agree with his father, just this once.</p><p>But there is a traitorous little voice that circles in the back of Adam’s mind—<em>she doesn’t want you, she never has – and why would she?</em>—that makes him take the brief and go, straightaway, leaving it all unsaid.</p><p>(Because if it is unsaid, then it is not so.)</p><p>(<em>Fool</em>, a voice that sounds like Cecelia’s chides him, <em>you know that that is not so</em>.)</p><p>It <em>had </em>occurred to Adam that Sophia would not live forever – he has worked with enough humans over the centuries to know of their frailty, of their short time on the earth and an even longer time below. There has been something beautiful, something <em>transient</em> about her from the moment he laid eyes on her, harried and suspicious and yet so alive with promise that he wanted to see realised.</p><p>He had thought they would have more <em>time</em>.</p><p>He had <em>assumed</em> they would have more time, that she would <em>want</em> them to have more time. An unfair assumption, perhaps (Nate would certainly think so, having already told him in the past that he has never been sure what answer he would have given if he had been given a choice back then), but she has never seemed—</p><p><em>No matter</em>, Adam thinks, and squares his shoulders, having found nothing at the supposed Trapper den but old comms devices and some stale food in the fridge. <em>We shall make the most of what time we <strong>do</strong> have</em>.</p><p>Adam’s two-day-long return to the Warehouse is laborious, the untouched forest paths more treacherous than they had been when he had left earlier in the day, and he passes several car transporters and breakdown crews before he even comes close to reaching Wayhaven.</p><p>The town itself is quiet as he passes through, most people having wisely stayed indoors – he’ll be back before too much longer in any case, to fulfil his nightly ritual of staying with Sophia until she falls asleep.</p><p>But first, he has to debrief Agent Laveau and make sure that the team know what to expect on future patrols, and—</p><p>And the team are waiting for him as he arrives back at the Warehouse, faces grim and frames tight, and he <em>knows</em> that something has happened.</p><p>**</p><p>She looks smaller like this, somehow. Unbearably fragile.</p><p>As fragile as he had always feared in his fevered nightmares, all paper-thin skin and bones that could (and did) snap like twigs. The airbag took most of the impact, though the dark, angry bruises on the bridge of Sophia’s nose and her collarbones speak to the force of the crash.</p><p>Her hands are some of the only parts of her that remain uninjured, and he holds them like crystal in his hands, letting only his thumbs brush over her knuckles, not daring to squeeze any tighter.</p><p>Adam isn’t sure how long he stays there – he does not need sleep, not when it’s <em>Sophia</em>, even though Mason offers to watch over her for a few hours while he sleeps. She might need him.</p><p>She begins to stir on what he thinks is the third day, the healing accelerated by Elidor’s best efforts – and when storm-grey eyes clouded with pain open to meet his, he startles at the sight of her.</p><p>“Hey.” Her voice is gravelly, brushes over his senses and envelops him and he <em>smiles</em> for the first time in what feels like centuries.</p><p>“Hello.” Adam feels almost shy, presses chapped lips to her knuckles in lieu of meeting her gaze, and feels the increase in her heart rate warm against his skin.</p><p>“You—” Sophia seems hazy for a moment, as if she is out of focus, and he takes one of her hands in both of his and smiles as reassuringly as he can.</p><p>“I’m here.” Kisses her hand again for good measure (he could kiss her hands, her lips, for eternity, just the two of them <em>forever and ever amen</em>—</p><p>But the look on her face says otherwise, speaks of <em>betrayal</em> and mistrust, and though Adam’s hand does not resist her attempt to remove her hand from his, his heart tells a very different story.</p><p>“You left.” Sophia’s voice is quiet, but the venom there stings, gets in amongst the chinks in his armour and corrodes the steel there.</p><p>“I—” Whatever excuse he might have tried falls on deaf ears as her voice climbs higher and louder.</p><p>“You <em>left</em> me.” Adam flinches as she speaks, and Sophia seems to deflate once the words have left her, turning away with some difficulty to face the opposite wall.</p><p>“Sophia, it’s not—” <em>It’s not like that, it was never—I could never</em>.</p><p>But the words never come the way he wants when it is her – the stakes are too high, the thrum of anxiety in his blood too heady and overwhelming to be able to <em>think</em> straight. “Sophia, <em>please</em>.”</p><p>“If you don’t think it’s a big deal, you don’t know me at all.” There is a quiet finality in Sophia’s tone that chills Adam to the bone, and he moves a little closer, unable to resist her gravitational pull.</p><p>“I—Sophia—” Adam’s lips cannot form the words (though what, <em>what</em> would he say to mend these fissures, that he hadn’t even realised he had created) and he can do no more than trace her form obsessively, learning the lines of her body as if it were the last time.</p><p>(Adam had always held back before, knowing in his heart of hearts that there would be, <em>must be</em>, a last time, that there would be an <em>end</em>.)</p><p>“Just <em>go</em>.”</p><p>He has never been able to refuse her anything.</p><p>
  <strong>SOPHIA</strong>
</p><p>Sophia is quite proud of herself – she has been able to stay away from the Warehouse and even any <em>mention</em> of the Agency for three weeks after being released back into the wild, patched up but still very much bruised.</p><p>Yes, it is childish. No, Sophia does not care.</p><p>Except, she very definitely <em>does</em> care. Has not been able to <em>sleep</em> properly in those three weeks without Adam’s body next to her, and lacking the centre of gravity that his weight and warmth represents a cruel ache.</p><p>Her work has not suffered – it is the only thing that <em>isn’t</em> suffering, that isn’t being dragged down into a vortex of numbness that threatens to consume her.</p><p>(Can it truly be called “numbness” if you cry yourself to sleep?)</p><p>If she’s being honest, she’s surprised not to have heard from him – of all the times for him to take her at face value, to respect her wishes, now is not the fucking time. She <em>knows</em> that isn’t fair, that he <em>does</em> respect—has respected her probably more than anyone in her life, but—</p><p>But he <em>left</em>. And that has to mean something. If you want something, you don’t leave.</p><p>(<em>You did</em>.</p><p><em>He started it</em>.)</p><p>Though—though he <em>had</em> pleaded with her, in that broken way when his thoughts were jumbled and he couldn’t breathe (he says that he only feels that way with her, and she has never been sure if that’s a good thing or not). So, maybe—</p><p>But he <em>left</em>.</p><p>And as if her wayward thoughts have summoned him, she hears <em>his</em> knock at the door, and <em>fuck</em>, she has never moved so fast in her life, barely giving him time to return his fist to his side.</p><p>“Hey.” Sophia’s voice is rough, the greeting scraping along like sandpaper, and she coughs slightly, not missing the way his brow furrows with concern.</p><p>“Hello.” Adam’s voice is quiet, subdued, and a far cry from the voice of the Commanding Agent that she—that <em>she</em>—</p><p>Sophia stands aside to wordlessly invite him in, and he moves past her, careful not to touch, and <em>that</em> stings, even though it is her fault.</p><p>They stare at each other in silence for a moment, and even the crushing tension between them is not enough to stop her from drinking in the sight of him, gold and jade and marble in the sunset filtered through the tatty blinds. She crosses her arms over her chest, self-conscious in little more than one of his far-too-baggy shirts that he did not come to collect.</p><p>Eventually, the tension is too great even for them, and they both try to speak (though Sophia isn’t sure whether it is to explain or excuse).</p><p>“Sophia, I—”</p><p>“I—”</p><p>The attempt is enough to make her smile slightly, and his eyes do not miss it, looking at her lips for a moment longer than necessary before shaking himself and meeting her eye.</p><p>“Let me—” Sophia watches his lips move soundlessly for a moment, before he pinches the bridge of his nose and collects himself, staring into her soul.</p><p>(Is it truly hers? She finds it difficult to tell anymore.)</p><p>“I want you. Us. I don’t want to waste any of the time we have left, especially if—” That <em>if</em> seems to choke him as surely as any noose or DMB, and Sophia’s brow furrows in concern until—</p><p>Until the cloud of confusion starts to clear and she starts to understand – or, at least she thinks she does.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You—” And the realisation seems to wash over Adam at the same time, and she <em>laughs</em> hysterically before biting the inside of her cheek to still herself. Runs calloused fingers across his cheekbone and smiles slightly when he leans into her touch so that she is cupping his cheek in her palm.</p><p>“I don’t want to leave you alone. Not again.”</p><p>At that, Adam seems to <em>choke</em>, throat working around a breath, and Sophia brings his lips to hers, tries to pour all her heart into him and feels him do the same – drinks him in like nectar and feels him nourish her, <em>cleanse</em> her. It’s messy, all teeth and tongues, and Adam <em>groans</em> into it (or he would, if the noise was not muffled by Sophia’s lips) and clutches her tightly to him.</p><p>“You—” His voice is broken, even as he buries his nose in her hair and crushes her to him, making it difficult to force the words out past the lump in her own throat.</p><p>“I want to be with you. Whatever it takes.” Hypersenses are apparently good for something, as he hears her words, lets them resonate in his rib cage, before pulling back to look her in the eye.</p><p>“But your life here—”</p><p>“Isn’t—” Adam’s eyes are searching, and she <em>knows</em> she has never been looked at like this, like she is <em>precious</em>, somehow.</p><p>“It isn’t the most important thing. I can rebuild my life wherever I am. But I can’t do without—” Now <em>she</em> has to cough before she can speak again (because <em>he</em> clearly isn’t going to do it, not while he’s looking at her misty-eyed and struck with something she still can’t quite believe is love).</p><p>“I don’t want to leave you.”</p><p>“I don’t want to leave <em>you</em>.” Adam echoes, and so much of this feels like them finding echoes of themselves in each other, across the centuries.</p><p><em>Then why did you?</em> Bites the words down but he sees them flare in her eyes and looks <em>ashamed</em> somehow.</p><p>“I thought you wanted to stay mortal. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t—” Sophia feels her frame loosen, even as one of his arms tightens around her waist, his free hand tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck.</p><p>“I know.” Presses a gentle kiss to his lips, and thinks she may taste the salt from his tear, but his lips on hers banish any other thoughts.</p><p> </p>
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